The Queen Mary II

I think most everyone knew this before I left, but my family opted to return to Canada in style aboard the ocean-liner Queen Mary II. First things first- that is one hell of a giant ship (the largest passenger ship, I think.) It was super-luxurious with a friendly and too-courteous crew, excellent facilities, and awesome food. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The crossing takes nine days in total, during which the only internet access I had would have cost me $25 and a kidney per hour. Even emails were $1.50 to send AND receive. So I was cut off for the whole time. The ship was quite stable and quiet, so it was easy to think you were in some fancy hotel with a strange view and rolling motion. Our cabin was large enough to sleep in and had a balcony (and a TV with repeating episodes of Scrubs and Friends which we tried not to watch too much.) There was a gym, which I used three times, a theatre which I never used, a planetarium where I saw a mis-titled lecture on post-WWII Britain called "Rock and Roll Babies", various restaurants, swimming pools, hot tubs, a night club (which I did frequent), casino (did not), pub (did), and ball room (briefly.)

The food was, as I said, excellent. There were appetizers, salads, dessert, and a choice of pasta, fish, poultry, red meat and vegetarian for the main course. I ate a lot. What I meant when I said the staff was too courteous was that I felt weird because they'd do stuff like push my chair in for me, unfold my serviette and place it on my lap, or say sorry as they made space for me to pass in the halls. Even having priority over them while walking down the hall is weird, since I don't have the superiority complex other people evidently do, where they want crew to wait on them hand and foot and stay out of their way.

One other nice thing about being on board is that I managed to meet people my age. The average age on that ship was above retirement, it seemed, since it consisted mostly of "the newly-wed and the nearly-dead," with more of the latter, but there was some social event for people from 18-30 where I met some mostly German people and hung out with them for the rest of the crossing. I learned a bit of ballroom dancing, which was funny but also fun (and it let me dance with cute girls), played board games and ping-pong, and went to the nightclub where they had a 40-year old DJ who was odd but nice enough, and some frat boys who were busy getting smashed. I tried to avoid them but Nik didn't seem to mind them so we were in the same circle of people. There were also weird as hell German barony-types where the guy was in a German frat and was quite full of himself and his sister who was 16 and looked closer to 26, I kid you not. Her face looked quite lifted and artificial.

But I was with nice people, not weird people. There were four German girls, a German guy and a Welsh guy. There was a girl I liked who lives near Berlin, so I'll probably meet up with her there. Overall, the crossing was fantabulous. We got into New York (harbour) at 4:30 so I got up at 5 to see us come in and watch the sunrise. It rose over Wall street, which was beautiful. I spent two days in New York, about which I'll write later.